While there’s no proven way to spot train one area for fat burning, it’s very possible to spot train one specific muscle group for toning. So as long as you’re being consistent with an all over body fat burning regimen, your efforts to tone up certain parts of your body with targeted exercises should pay off.
There are many trouble spots people usually want to focus on when toning up. Toning up doesn’t mean the same as bulking, so you don’t have to worry about growth if you don’t want to. It’s more about the shape and firmness of the muscle, not its size.
How to Tone Your Arms
Arms can be a source of shame for many people. Depending on how fat is distributed throughout your body, you may or may not have a bit of extra skin and fat around your arms, often around the tricep or underarm area.
Arms can be a particularly hard part of the body to tone up, since it’s not just dependent on losing weight like it is with belly fat. Instead, you need to focus on lifting weights in order to tone up your arms.
Triceps are the most common problem area for people’s arms. You might have noticed a bit of extra skin hanging down from your arms if you hold them out to the side, called batwings, and that’s just a lack of definition in your tricep.
By putting on more muscle in that area, you’ll be able to firm it up and reduce the amount of loose skin. People often worry about looking too muscular, but rest assured, that won’t be the case.
It just takes a bit of healthy muscle to look toned. There are plenty of tricep workouts to do in order to tone this area, with one of the most common ones being dips. Dips can be done just about anywhere with various levels of difficulty depending on how strong you are.
They can be done by holding onto a slightly elevated surface behind you, with your feet out in front of you on the ground. You let your body come down, and then push yourself back up.
This should give you a pretty good burning feeling in your triceps. For those who are a bit more fitness inclined, there are more advanced and difficult forms of tricep dips that you can do.
Some will support their whole bodyweight on two bars and dip their body down that way, while some will even add on weight and do this for added difficulty. Either way, this is a surefire way to tone up your arms.
One often overlooked part of your arms is your forearms. People are always focused on their biceps or their underarms, and they forget that there’s a pretty significant amount of arm muscles below the elbow.
By doing simple things like grip strength testers, you can tone up your forearms and give your overall arms a bit of a nicer look, though some people just won’t be able to tell exactly what you did.
Plus, the muscle strength will support you and help prevent injuries such as tennis elbow whenever you have strength in your arms that can support everyday activities. You may not even think about this until it becomes a problem and you’re forced to work that area out as a form of recovery and repair.
How to Tone Your Legs
Many people store a bit of their extra fat in their legs. Often times, this can be seen in the quadriceps or hamstrings, but also a bit in the hips. Now, having fat on your legs isn’t necessarily unhealthy, but excess fat certainly is.
This can make things like moving around more difficult, and getting into some kinds of clothes, like jeans, a bit of a tight fit. In order to avoid those kinds of problems, you need to tone up your legs.
There are plenty of ways to do this, and you don’t necessarily have to do all of them or just one of them – you can mix and match these as you’d like. The first and most common way to tone up legs is by dieting.
If your body stores fat mostly in the legs, then dieting will surely help your leg mass go down. Cutting back on your overall calorie intake as well as managing your macromolecules will help you lose weight and will shed a good amount of the fat in your legs.
Of course, cardio is also a great option. Cardio is incredibly versatile, so you should be able to find something that you like doing in order to help you tone up your legs. Naturally, when people think of cardio, they tend to think about cardio machines like treadmills or exercise bikes.
These are fine options, but they’re not your only options. There are plenty of other leg-driven cardio routines out there that you might find more enjoyable. Biking, for example, uses a lot of leg energy and is great for getting your legs toned.
Biking short distances instead of driving can help you tone up and save money on things like gas, so it can be a great option if you live in a more suburban or urban area. Other than that, things like hiking or playing recreational sports are sure to get your blood pumping, your legs moving, and your lower body more toned.
They’re also just great ways to get connected with new people and enjoy a new hobby. Making cardio enjoyable is by far the best way of getting in shape, because having fun with new friends will always be better than jogging on a treadmill for a few hours.
Finally, there are always simple forms of weightlifting. You don’t necessarily need to use weights for leg training, especially if you’re looking to tone up rather than put on muscle. Doing high reps of bodyweight squats is a simple and easy way to get your legs toned up fast.
How to Tone Your Stomach
The stomach is by far the most common problem area for excess fat. People are constantly worried about having a “gut” or “belly,” and want to tone it down as quickly as possible.
Often times, people look for a flat stomach or even abs as the number one sign of fitness, so it’s certainly an important thing to tone up. From a more health based perspective, belly fat is one of the most dangerous kinds, being more of an indicator for things like heart problems than any other kind of fat.
The most useful solution for belly fat is simple weight loss through dieting. It’s common for people to believe that exercise is what gets you in shape, but that’s not necessarily the case.
Exercise does help, but abs are made (or covered up) in the kitchen. The calories you burn with an intense workout can be undone by a single soda or dessert. Instead of focusing on exercising as hard as possible and then rewarding yourself with unhealthy food, simply eat less unhealthy food.
Getting rid of things like liquid calories from sweet drinks or eating multiple servings of desserts can help you shed pounds so quickly. If you want the real fast track to getting rid of belly fat, dieting is your best option.
When combined with dieting, exercise is also a great helper in getting your stomach toned. When you’re using one specific body part a lot, it’ll burn fat around that area the most.
There are plenty of exercises out there that you can do to help your stomach fat disappear. Abdominal exercises are going to be your best bet here. Usually when people think of this they default to something like sit-ups, which aren’t really that fun, and in fact, aren’t really the best ab exercise.
There are tons of more enjoyable ab exercises that will still get you in shape without feeling like you’re in gym class again. Get together with a buddy and do crunches with a medicine ball tossed after each rep.
Lay with your feet touching and when you’re at the top, toss the medicine ball to your partner. Wait until they’re back up after their rep, catch it, and repeat. Tossing around a heavy ball tends to make things a bit more enjoyable, as does doing something with a friend. Another great ab exercise is yoga, which provides you with less stress about working out harder, and more relaxation and meditation.
How to Tone Your Back
The back, for both men and women, is a great muscle to tone up. A toned, muscular back is what absolutely completes any summer body type look, separating you from some people who just hit the gym every now and then.
Toning up your back can help you get rid of things like love handles, as well as give you a bit more of a “V” shaped body that makes you look much better. For the most part, people tend to not store a lot of fat in their backs.
It mostly ends up being a lack of muscle that makes it look untoned. So, for the most part, toning up your back involves a good amount of weightlifting in order to get it looking strong.
There are tons of different exercises that you’ll want to do or try in order to get your back toned up. If you can do them, pullups are always a great back exercise. They put a lot of work into your lats, which are the upper side parts of your back that give you that “V” shape.
Pullups can be done even at home with a cheap piece of equipment that attaches to your door frame, so you don’t even need a gym membership for those. If you can’t do pullups properly, lots of gyms have an assisted pullup machine, in which you can adjust the amount of weight that it helps push you with to make the pullups easier.
Rows are a big part of back toning. Whether it be a common low row machine, or bent over rows with a barbell, rowing is great for your lower and middle back. This basically covers the muscles that aren’t the lats, but are still important for having your back look toned.
Rowing is a very simple motion, in that all you’re really doing is pulling something towards your stomach, so that your back does the work. Rows can be a bit dangerous if you don’t do them properly, though.
Pulling with your back should be done with an appropriate amount of weight and should be done in a controlled way. If you’re flinging the weight towards yourself as hard as possible, you’re probably going to injure yourself long before you put on any muscle.
There are tons of variations of these two common workouts that make back exercises very versatile. From lateral pulldowns to replace pullups to all kinds of dumbbell exercises to replace rows, you’re sure to find something that you’ll enjoy.
How to Tone Your Buttocks
Plenty of people store a bit of excess fat in their glutes. While having fat there is usually pretty normal, you can tell when it’s a bit too much. Having some muscle behind that fat can make your glutes more firm, and it also helps a lot with day to day life in terms of mobility.
There are plenty of ways to tone up your buttocks with simple bodyweight exercises and minor weightlifting. One fun way to tone up your glutes is through swimming. Swimming is a surprisingly good form of cardio, as long as you’re actually doing it for exercise.
By swimming laps instead of just floating around for awhile, you’re actually doing a lot of cardio. It’s pretty low-impact work so you don’t feel as sore, but you do get the benefits. Swimming combines using your glutes as you swim with fat-burning cardio in order to give you a lot more definition.
Of course, there are plenty of bodyweight exercises that you can do at home as well. Squats are by far the most important bodyweight exercises for toned glutes. If done with proper form, you should feel it distinctly in your glutes when you drive up from the ground, and doing this for high amounts of reps will have you feeling sore in no time.
You can also add difficulty by holding a medicine ball or even doing weighted squats with a barbell and all. Another exercise that’s great for your glutes is lunges. Lunges alone are great for your legs as a whole, and by doing twist lunges you can even get an ab workout in.
However, for your glutes, they’re fantastic. They’re a bit lighter on your knees, and you’re actually moving while you do them, so it feels less static and boring. You can hold dumbbells on either side of you while you do these for added intensity.
You can’t go wrong with gym machines. When you walk around the machines at your gym, you’ll find that they’ll almost always have stickers on them telling you what body part this machine helps with, and how exactly to do the exercise.
Pay attention to these so that you save yourself from sitting there for minutes on end figuring out what body parts go where. Find yourself a nice glute machine at your gym and get to work. Chances are, it has one or two that you’ll find enjoyable enough.
Make sure you’re implementing a toning strategy for all of the important areas of your body. You don’t to have only a few helping support your frame. You want to give each muscle the ability to lend help whenever you need it.
